Featured series 
Tag: psychology and psychiatry
-
Campus & Community
Dogs teach humans new tricks
With 82 students registered, “The Cognitive Dog: Savant or Slacker” is the second-largest Extension School psychology course this semester. When Bruce Blumberg proposed the course to Assistant Dean of Continuing Education Mary Higgins, her first thought was: “wacky idea.” However, upon investigating it further Higgins realized it “could be a great course” because it would…
-
Health
Teen suicide and antidepressants
With the recent FDA warning about the use of antidepressants with children and adolescents, doctors and patients are more cautious about treating youth with antidepressants. Parents and doctors are challenged to make a balanced assessment of risk and benefits. Dr. Nancy Rappaport, Dr. Jefferson B. Prince, and Dr. Jeff Q. Bostic of the psychiatry department…
-
Campus & Community
Violence as a health problem
“Are we a nation in which violence is out of control and will plague us and will interfere with our freedom?” asks Felton Earls, professor of social medicine at Harvard Medical School and professor of human behavior and development at Harvard School of Public Health. “Violence reduces confidence that all the other things that we…
-
Campus & Community
Neuroscientist Buckner named professor of psychology
Randy L. Buckner, a neuroscientist noted for his innovative use of new imaging techniques to map human memory formation and retrieval, has been named professor of psychology in Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, effective Oct. 1. Buckner is also affiliated with Harvard’s newly formed Center for Brain Science. Buckner, 35, comes to Harvard…
-
Health
Study: No psychological or cognitive deficits from peyote
Researchers at Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital report that Native Americans who use the hallucinogen peyote regularly in connection with religious ceremonies show no evidence of brain damage or psychological problems. In fact, members of the Navajo tribe who regularly use peyote actually scored significantly better on several measures of overall mental health than did subjects from…
-
Campus & Community
They are born to add
How does someone who hasn’t learned to count yet, say a preschooler, deal with numbers? Adults are comfortable with symbols like “10” to signify 10 balloons, beeps, or beliefs. But how do kids handle numbers when they don’t know numbers? Very well, according to experiments done at Harvard University. In these experiments, 5-year-olds, who had…
-
Campus & Community
Alien abduction claims explained
Abduction stories are strikingly similar. Victims wake up and find themselves paralyzed, unable to move or cry out for help.
-
Campus & Community
Suicides are down, researchers say
The suicide rate among men and women ages 18 to 54 years fell 6 percent since 1990. In 1990-92, the rate was approximately 15 out of every 100,000 adults. It was down to about 14 out of 100,000 in 2000-02. At the same time, 3,000 out of every 100,000 people reported that they had suicidal…
-
Science & Tech
Witnessing gun violence significantly increases the likelihood that a child will also commit violent crimes
“Based on this study’s results, showing the importance of personal contact with violence, the best model for violence may be that of a socially infectious disease,” says Felton Earls, MD, HMS professor of social medicine and principal investigator of the study. The study, a project that included interviews of children and teenagers from Chicago neighborhoods,…
-
Campus & Community
Kudzu cuts alcohol consumption
Scott Lukas, professor of psychiatry at McLean, a psychiatric hospital affiliated with Harvard Medical School, says these results inspired his team to test on humans. The study was conducted on 14 men and women, average age 24 years, in a “laboratory” apartment where each person was allowed to drink as many as six beers. After…
-
Campus & Community
Pigeons saved by rump feathers
Alberto Palleroni was a pigeon-napper. At night he haunted silos and other roosting places, snatching hundreds of startled birds. Then, he and his friends would change their feathers. By carefully cutting, stripping, and gluing, they switched rump feathers between two types of pigeons. Those that got white feathers on their rumps fared much better than…
-
Campus & Community
Psychology of economics
The much-touted concept of “interdisciplinary collaboration” was more than a concept last week at the Eric M. Mindich Conference on Experimental Social Science. Titled “Action Research in Psychology and Economics,” the conference – held at the Harvard Law School on Friday and Saturday (March 4 and 5) – was the first major event to be…
-
Campus & Community
The accidental ‘best friend’
Harvard researchers studying Siberian foxes have uncovered evidence that the ability to interpret human expressions and gestures that helped transform the wild wolf into humankind’s cooperative “best friend” may have occurred by accident. The research casts doubt onto a previous theory that domestic dogs’ ability to interpret human communication results from generations of selection for…
-
Campus & Community
HBS’s Teresa Amabile ‘tracks creativity in the wild’
If you were paid more money, would you produce more creative work? If that report languishing on your desk for months were suddenly due by the end of the week, would it be better, crisper, more innovative? What if your job depended on it? Teresa Amabile, the Edsel Bryant Ford Professor of Business Administration at…
-
Campus & Community
Male body image
Asian men show less dissatisfaction with their bodies than males in the United States and Europe, according to a Harvard study. This may explain why anabolic steroid abuse is much less prevalent in places like Taiwan than in the United States, Europe, and Australia, the researchers found. “Disorders of body image, including a pathological preoccupation…
-
Campus & Community
Suicide high among female doctors
Male doctors take their own lives at a higher rate than the general population of white men in the United States. That’s been known for some time. Now, the largest, latest study of physician suicides in this country has found that female doctors take their lives much more often. The study was undertaken by Harvard…
-
Health
Phobic anxiety increases risk of sudden cardiac death in women
According to lead author Christine M. Albert, M.D., M.P.H., an epidemiologist at BWH and an electrophysiologist and cardiologist at MGH, “Phobic anxiety is associated with coronary heart disease risk factors. However, in this study, in which these risk factors were controlled, we found a correlation between higher levels of phobic anxiety and death from CHD,…
-
Health
Study says women don’t experience pain, anxiety during mammograms
“I think it’s an old wives tale that mammograms hurt,” says the study’s lead author, Alice Domar, PhD, director of the Mind/ Body Center for Women’s Health at Boston IVF and senior psychologist in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. According to the American Cancer Society, one-third to one-half…
-
Health
Extended release stimulant effective for long-term ADHD treatment
In the October 2005 issue of the Journal of the American Association of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, a multi- institutional research team reported finding that treatment with Concerta, a once-daily form of the drug methylphenidate, successfully controlled ADHD symptoms in more than 200 children with ADHD. The study was supported by McNeil Pharmaceuticals, which manufactures…
-
Health
Researchers find a gene for fear
A team of researchers from Harvard, Columbia, and Rutgers universities has found the seat of fear. It’s located in a pea-sized area deep in the brain of all mammals, from gerbils, to lions, to humans. And it’s involved in both inborn fear and the dread we acquire from dealing with people and things that hurt…
-
Health
Study finds women hesitant to take tamoxifen as preventive measure
“Our study underscores the need [for medical professionals] to address psychological factors that may influence decision- making, in order to help women feel confident and satisfied with their treatment choice,” says the study’s lead author, Sharon Bober, PhD, staff psychologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI) and clinical instructor…
-
Health
Study says therapy better than pills in treating sleep-onset insomnia
The findings show non-drug techniques yield better short- and long-term results than the most widely prescribed sleeping pill, zolpidem, commonly known as Ambien. “Sleeping pills are the most frequent treatment for insomnia, yet CBT techniques clearly were more successful in helping the majority of study participants to become normal sleepers,” said study leader Gregg Jacobs.…
-
Health
Study finds leptin plays a key role in women’s health
Senior author Christos Mantzoros, M.D., director of the Human Nutrition Research Unit and clinical research overseer of the Department of Endocrinology at BIDMC and associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School explains that the three groups of women who can most benefit from this study are very thin women who are infertile, serious athletes…
-
Campus & Community
The brains behind writer’s block
“It’s likely that writing and other creative work involve a push-pull interaction between the frontal and temporal lobes,” Harvard Medical School neurology instructor Alice Flaherty speculates. If the temporal lobe activity holds sway, an aspiring scribe may turn out 600 logorrheic pages. If the temporal lobes are restrained by frontal lobe changes, the result might…
-
Campus & Community
Scientists pursue happiness
“When we try to predict what will make us happy we’re often wrong,” says Daniel Gilbert, a professor of psychology at Harvard University. “Researchers all over the world find the same predictable errors, whether the pursuit involves romance, a new car, or a sumptuous meal.” Gilbert uses the results of his study of election outcomes…
-
Science & Tech
Monsters, tooth fairies and germs!
Harvard Graduate School of Education Professor Paul Harris argues that children as young as preschool age can discern whether or not they’re hearing the truth, even in a domain for which they have no previous knowledge, by accurately judging the reliability of the person who’s telling them. “Particularly among 4-year-olds, but also among 3-year-olds, they’re…
-
Health
Adolescent stress can change brain during adulthood
Researchers found that adult rats exposed to a social stress during adolescence (ages approximating 13 to 15 years in humans) showed a significant decrease in a specific protein found in the hippocampus, a brain region important for learning and memory. In fact, the loss of this protein, synaptophysin, is at least as great as that…
-
Health
Study shows medical schools lack end-of-life training
A study, published by Dana-Farber researchers in the September 2003 issue of the Journal of General Internal Medicine, suggests that increasing medical students’ opportunities to learn about end-of-life care will require not only curriculum changes, but a re-examination of some of the unspoken rules that govern medical education. “The tremendous growth of hospice and palliative…